


Slow Dance

by battle_cat



Series: Together [34]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Dancing, Developing Relationship, F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 13:04:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12654081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat
Summary: There’s a party.It isn’t the first harvest that the New Citadel has brought in, but the crops are still hard-won enough that every basket of roots and grain is cause for celebration. Furiosa usually manages to make a cursory appearance and then slip away from the noise and crowds with a minimum of fuss, because what is she going to do at a party? But, for the first time, Max is here.





	Slow Dance

**Author's Note:**

> A smutty_arts prompt fill. Prompt was "Dancing in the dark and things get hot and heavy."

There’s a party.

It isn’t the first harvest that the New Citadel has brought in, but the crops are still hard-won enough that every basket of roots and grain is cause for celebration. Furiosa usually manages to make a cursory appearance and then slip away from the noise and crowds with a minimum of fuss, because what is she going to do at a party? But, for the first time, Max is here.

“You don’t have to go,” Furiosa says as soon as the subject comes up. He’s only been back two days, still jumpy and raw around the edges.

Across the mess hall table from them, Cheedo looks scandalized. “Of course he has to go! There’s going to be _dancing._ ”

Furiosa raises an eyebrow.

“He’ll come,” Toast says without looking up from her bowl. “There’s also food.”

 

“We don’t have to stay long,” Furiosa says as they walk down the corridor toward the swell of voices already buzzing from the mess hall.

“Mm.”

“I should make an appearance, but… We can just eat and then leave.”

“Mm.”

“We _don’t_ have to dance.”

“Mm.” It’s the same neutral tone he’s been using, but she looks over and catches him hiding a little smile.

 

The benches and tables have been pushed back against the walls, leaving an open space in the middle of the room. The kitchen workers are dishing out crisp greens and millet cakes, roast lizard seasoned with precious spices, little slivers of fresh peaches.

They stay for the food, and then somehow end up staying later. A flask of Vuvalini ‘shine appears from somewhere, and it gets passed around enough times that Furiosa is feeling warm and loose. Max’s thigh is a steady pressure against hers on the bench, and she lets herself lose track of the conversation around them.

 

There’s music.

It starts with the Old World music-maker that used to reside solely in Joe’s quarters, the voices of long-dead singers and forgotten instruments issuing from the strange waxy disks that spin on it.

Max and Furiosa lean against the wall in an out-of-the-way corner as the first adventurous souls begin swaying and twirling on the makeshift dance floor. Everyone is making it up as they go along, with sometimes a half-remembered step here and there, moving with partners or in groups or by themselves.

Without warning, Janey slides up and swats Max on the arm with the end of her scarf. “Ask her to dance.”

“You don’t have to,” Furiosa says quickly. 

But a new song starts up, a woman’s smoky voice entwining with a slow melody. And, to her shock, Max holds out a hand and inclines his head toward the dance floor.

“If, mm, you want…” he mutters, and Mothers, he’s _blushing._

So somehow she lets him lead her to the edge of the open space where people are moving to the music. He steps close enough for their noses to brush. There’s a momentary awkward shuffle when she doesn’t know where to put her arms, and then he guides her into place, her metal hand on his shoulder and her flesh one intertwined with his, held close to their bodies.

He’s moving them, a gentle back-and-forth rhythm. It’s not really anything that could be called dancing. It’s hardly more than swaying in place, but he seems to have a plan for what they should be doing. Maybe this is just another strange Old World thing he knows how to do.

“‘S okay?” he murmurs.

“Yeah.” The long-dead woman sings, velvety and slow.

Max’s arm is steady around her waist. After a moment she lets her forehead rest against his.

They hardly ever touch in public, beyond what’s practical. They can work side by side the garage all day without so much as brushing fingers over a passed tool. There are times when desire flares hot and boils over until they end up fucking in a hidden corner or scurrying back to her room, but…that’s understandable. Lots of people fuck. War Boys fuck in the bunks and in back corners of the garage, and now that sex isn’t a thing to be owned or taken by force plenty of the Citadel’s residents fuck wherever they please.

Lust is simple. It’s these small, soft moments that feel more bold: his fingers interlaced with hers, the way she’s letting him move her even if it’s little more than rocking in place. The way he touches her face sometimes in the moments before they fall asleep together. The little gifts he brings her from his wanderings, sometimes practical but just as often entirely frivolous. The way she catches him looking at her sometimes, half fondness and half awe. Those are the moments she doesn’t know what to do with.

There’s a stifled squeak from somewhere behind them and a hasty “Shut _up_ ” that she recognizes as Toast’s voice.

“They’re watching us, aren’t they?” The Sisters are starting to build their own identities now, in the garage and the gardens and the infirmary, but they still tend to clump together in a pack when they’re in the same space.

“Mm-hmm,” Max says, sounding unconcerned.

They keep swaying. The song ends and another one begins. The beat of this one is faster but they keep moving in the same languid rhythm. She’s not paying attention to the words. Somewhere out of sight, the mess hall’s wide braziers and oil lamps are being extinguished, leaving the room in candlelight.

At some point she looks up at his face and there’s a bright shard of sadness in his expression. “What?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

She steps a little closer and wraps her arms around him, letting her head rest on his shoulder. After a moment she feels him exhale a shaky breath and curl up against her, his face tucked against her neck.

He’s warm, and she’s had enough swigs from Janey’s flask to stop watching for every reaction around her. She lets herself relax inside the circle of his arms. She isn’t like this in public; she isn’t _soft,_ and it feels daring and strange, like taking a running leap off a ledge and hoping there’s someone to catch you.

 

Later, there is drumming and whooping and singing, War Boys climbing on tables to breathe clouds of fire, and with a wordless exchanged glance they slip out of the room.

They barely make it around the corner before Max presses her against the wall, steady and certain and hungry for her kiss when she leans in. They’re still in earshot of the mess hall; she can feel the rhythm of the drums in the rock wall against her back as she lets him devour her mouth.

The hallway isn’t particularly private, but it’s just dark enough and she’s just tipsy enough that she doesn’t care. She wraps flesh and metal hands around his back and pulls him tight against her, lets her hips grind, groans when he worms a hand between the wall and her body to squeeze her ass.

“Your room.” It sounds more like a mutual reminder than a question or a request; she is squirming against him and if this goes on much longer they’ll end up fucking right here against the wall.

 

They stumble to her room and then she’s on the bed, clothes scattered, and he’s taking her apart with his mouth and fingers, licking her to a writhing, shuddering climax. She’s still twitching when he slides inside her, and she wraps her limbs around him until they might as well be one creature of sweaty, sliding flesh and grunting breath, rocking until they’re both exhausted.

 

He sits up against the wall and watches her fall asleep next to him, the smooth unguarded line of her bare back burnished by the moonlight coming in the window. He used to feel a twinge of disappointment whenever she turned her back to him to sleep, before he realized that that meant she considered him safe.

It had been one of those strange moments, dancing with Furiosa, when time seemed to slip and slide out of place. He was at the Citadel, his arm around this woman made out of fire and steel, who could land a thousand-meter shot without breaking a sweat but still blushed when he held her hand in public.

(He was at the high school formal, Jessie’s arms around his neck, awkwardly shuffling through the steps his father had shown him so he wouldn’t embarrass himself.)

There are times when it seems like a fever dream, the life he had had Before, something cooked up by a radiation-addled brain to escape the endless desperate scrabble for survival. The world had already been going to hell, even back then, but there had still been high school and slow dancing and sneaking off to make out on the beach, the quotidian pleasures of youth that seem unimaginable now.

(He was at his own wedding, dancing with Jessie in her hand-me-down dress, her heels and her hair conspiring to make her an inch taller than him, which no one cared about because she was ravishing.)

There are other times when remembering is painful enough that he knows it had to have been real.

(He was in his living room, his arms around Jessie from behind, swaying slowly while she rocked the tiniest, most perfect human he had ever seen.)

From the scant notes they’ve compared, he knows that Furiosa didn’t have a Before, not like he did. War and drought had already swept over her corner of the world when she was born. The harshness of the Wasteland is all she’s ever known.

He can’t imagine what she would be like if she’d grown up shaped by a softer life. What he would be like, now, if he hadn’t been scoured down by grief and bitter survival. If they would have been drawn together with such intensity. But she is bright as a flare, lighting up corners of himself that had been dark for years.

He tries, these days, to stay present, to keep the ghosts at bay. Especially here. Especially with Furiosa. He tries to ground himself in her body, her hard lines and eager kisses and uninhibited moans. He’s not sure if he tries harder around her or if she’s just _realer_ than everything else, but it works all right when she is near. Most of the time.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr!](http://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com)


End file.
